Rights organization sounds alarm bells that medical data of 1.6 million hospital patients are now held by Google


by Christina Morillo

The brother company Google, an artificial intelligence company " DeepMind ", has a healthcare department, in cooperation with the state-run medical service business · NHS in the UK, has developed the application "Streams" for medical staff. DeepMind has declared a posture that it is "independent from Google" until now, but it is announced that a new development team of Streams will move to Google Health, and it is taking great criticism from rights organizations.

Privacy advocates sound the alarm after Google grabs DeepMind UK health app - The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/14/18094874/google-deepmind-health-app-privacy-concerns-uk-nhs-medical-data



DeepMind, a parent company of Alphabet, a parent company of Google, has been based in the UK and has been engaged in numerous medical projects, including the development of new technologies to reduce cooperative medical expenses in the UK and real-time patient patient information so far I have been advancing. This one is an application called "Streams" that allows doctors and nurses to quickly judge the state of acute renal failure, and in fact, Streams is actually being tested in the medical field.

On the other hand, on November 8, Mr. David Feinberg, former CEO of American medical service organization "Geisinger", took office as new representative of health care department on Google. And under the direction of Mr. Feinberg, DeepMind Health announced that Streams' development team newly joined the Google Health team. In the blog posting, the point that "Continue research with academic partners" is emphasized, but at the same time, it also states that products to be released in the future are under umbrella of Google.

Scaling Streams with Google | DeepMind
https://deepmind.com/blog/scaling-streams-google/



Google Health unit absorbs DeepMind health
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/13/google-health-unit-absorbs-deepmind-health.html

The problem was pointed out that Google and Deep Mind, private companies, enter the medical field in the past. In July 2017, a ruling has also been ruled that a contract between British hospital and DeepMind "did not adhere to the Data Protection Act". This decision ruled that DeepMind made improper access to the medical data of 1.6 million patients in the development of Streams but before December was decided DeepMind wrote a contract to reassure people He said that he was correct.

Mr. Mustafa Suleiman of DeepMind said in 2016 "DeepMind is operating autonomously separately from Google.We have not associated patient data with Google accounts, products, and services all the time since "I said . Critics pointed out that the Streams development team has moved to the Google Health team, "broke promises." Meanwhile, DeepMind explains that "Medical data are not exposed to risks," said DeepMind, "All patient data is under strict control of the partner and data is used with them."

However, researcher Julia Pauls dismissed the explanation of DeepMind outright. "DeepMind said that Streams would never be related to Google, but now Streams is from Google, Streams has already been controversial, this is a betrayal of trust," he posted on Twitter .


Sam Smith, a researcher belonging to a medical information-related civil society "MedConfidential", also says, "Deep Mind and Mustafa never accepted that we handed the data to Google, but that's because Alphabet is the whole of Deep Mind Health It does not mean that we do not give the data to Google. "

However, be careful that not all projects of DeepMind Health will go under the control of Google. Departments specialized in research, such as diagnosing eye diseases and developing algorithms to predict breast cancer , will remain under the control of DeepMind. Only teams dealing with commercial applications will go on to Google.

Also, although DeepMind had established an independent investigation committee to oversee the transaction with the NHS, the investigation committee is considered to be abolished by this transition. The investigation committee "This structure was inappropriate in the future as it was a management structure for DeepMind Health to move as part of the British government, but now it is moving for worldwide outcomes," Deep Mind's public relations announces comments.

And it seems that there is a change also in the Streams application itself. Until now, the application did not use AI, but from now on, development will be carried out for incorporation in the AI ​​assistant for doctors and nurses. However, it is unknown at the time of article creation whether AI analysis will be carried out for the medical data of 1.6 million people accessed by Streams.

The Verge of international news media commented that "Whatever happens next, the existence of DeepMind in the UK has changed irreversibly."

Related Posts:

in Software,   Security, Posted by darkhorse_log